Paul Cezanne
Madame Cezanne in Blue

ArtistFrench, 1839–1906
CultureFrench
Titles
  • Madame Cezanne in Blue
Date1888–1890
PlaceFrance
MediumOil on canvas
DimensionsCanvas: 29 3/16 × 24 in. (74.1 × 61 cm)
Frame: 35 1/8 × 29 7/8 × 2 7/8 in. (89.2 × 75.9 cm)
Credit LineThe Robert Lee Blaffer Memorial Collection, gift of Sarah Campbell Blaffer
Object number47.29
Current Location
The Audrey Jones Beck Building
221 Shell Oil Gallery
On view

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Object Type
Description

Paul Cézanne produced more than 40 painted portraits of his wife, Hortense Fiquet, during their roughly three decades together. In the MFAH version, Hortense is striking in her plainness. Cézanne makes no attempt to probe her personality or emotional state. Rather, his primary interest is in the relationship of forms.


In Madame Cézanne in Blue, he creates subtle tensions between Hortense's body and the space that surrounds her. For example, the brown shapes in the background merge with her body in an undefined, mysterious manner, making the space behind her right side difficult to read. Also, the right side of her face is presented as a mask-like form, a cutout on top of the background. Cézanne's treatment of the left side of her body is completely different. Through contrasts of light and shade set against a light-filled background, he defines the space more clearly.


Cézanne's work exerted a profound influence on modern painting. First trained in his native Aix-en-Provence, Cézanne went in 1861 to Paris, where he studied at the informal Académie Suisse and met Impressionist painter Camille Pissarro, who influenced Cézanne's artistic development. Cézanne sought—in contrast to his Impressionist contemporaries—a classicizing, less-naturalistic mode of expression, and he attempted to realize in his canvases the sensations of light and color that he saw in nature. In his maturity he came to harmonize two seemingly antagonistic styles; he imposed Impressionist free brushwork and the high-keyed color of natural light on compositions in which individual elements, including the human form, were reordered and even distorted.


Provenance[Ambroise Vollard, Paris]; [Walther Halverson, Oslo]; [Étienne Bignou, Paris]; [M. Knoedler and Co., New York, 1930–1942] jointly with [Thannhauser Gallery, Lucerne, Switzerland, 1930–1942]; Mrs. Robert Lee (Sarah Campbell) Blaffer, 1942; given to MFAH, 1947.
Exhibition HistoryLeicester Galleries, London, 1925.

Thannhauser Gallery, Berlin, 1927.

"Masterpieces by Nineteenth Century French Painters," M. Knoedler Gallery, New York, 1930.

"Exhibition of French Paintings," Society of Fine Arts, Wilmington, Delaware, February 2–16, 1931.

"Exhibition of French Painting," Knoedler Gallery, Chicago, February 24–March 14, 1931.

"Modern French Painting," Detroit Institute of Art, 1931.

"Paul Cézanne," San Francisco Museum of Art, 1937.

"Centennial Paul Cézanne," Musée de Lyon, France, May 1939.

"French Art of the Nineteenth Century," The Fogg Museum of Art, Cambridge, Massachusetts, July–August 1942.

"Paul Cezanne," Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, October 16, 1997–January 11, 1998.

Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, November 1942.

"Old Masters of Modern Art," Memorial Art Gallery, Rochester, New York, April–May 1944.

"One Hundred Years 1846–1946," M. Knoedler and Co., New York, April 1–27, 1946.

"Paintings by Paul Cézanne," Cincinnati Art Museum, February 5–March 9, 1947.

"Cézanne Exhibition," The Art Institute of Chicago, February 6–March 16, 1952.

"Cézanne Exhibition," Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, April 4-May 18, 1952.

Fort Worth Art Center, September–November 1954.

"Art in the Twentieth Century," San Francisco Museum of Art, June–July 1955.

Art Center, La Jolla, California, June–July 1956.

"Art from Ingres to Pollock," University of California, Berkeley, March 5–April 2, 1960.

"Texas Collectors," Marlborough-Gerson, Inc., New York, November 19–December 20, 1964.

"La Peinture Francaise dan les Collections Américaines," Museum of Bordeaux, France, May 13–September 15, 1966.

"Cézanne," Musée Saint-Georges, Liége, Belgium, March 12–May 9, 1982; Musée Granet, Aix-en-Provence, France, June 12–August 31, 1982.

"In Quest of Excellence," Center for the Fine Arts, Miami, January 12–April 22, 1984.

"A Permanent Heritage: Major Works from the Collection," Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, October 23, 1980–January 4, 1981.

"Cézanne Paintings: Masterworks from Four Decades," Kunsthalle Tübingen, Germany, January 16–May 2, 1993.

"Cézanne," Grand Palais, Paris, September 26, 1995–January 1, 1996; Tate Gallery, London, February 7–April 28, 1996; Philadelphia Museum of Art, May 26–September 1, 1996.

"Paul Cézanne," Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, October 16, 1997–January 11, 1998.

"In the Company of Women: Selection from the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston," 1998 International Fine Art Fair, The Seventh Regiment Armory, New York, May 6–13, 1998.

"The Classic Cézanne," Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, November 8, 1998–February 28, 1999.

“Masterpieces of European Painting from the 15th to 20th Centuries from
the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation," Museum of Art, Ehime, Matsuyama, Japan, April 13–May 30,1999; Chiba Prefectural Art Museum, Japan, June 5–July 11, 1999; Mie Prefectural Art Museum, Tsu, Japan, July 17–August 22, 1999; Fukuoka Art Museum, Japan, August 27–October 3, 1999.

"Faces of Impressionism," Baltimore Museum of Art, October 10, 1999–January 3, 2000; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, March 25–May 7, 2000; Cleveland Museum of Art, May 28–July 30, 2000.

State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow, February 2–August 30, 2001.

"Paul Cezanne: Il Padre dei Moderni," Museum of Risorgimento, Complesso del Vittoriano, Rome, March 7–July 7, 2002.

"The Mirror and the Mask: The Portrait in the Age of Picasso," Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, June 17–September 16, 2007.

"Homage to Cézanne: His Influence on the Development of Twentieth Century Painting," Yokohama Museum of Art, Japan, November 14, 2008–January 25, 2009; Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art, Japan, February 7–April 12, 2009.

"Cézanne and the Past," Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, October 25, 2012–February 19, 2013.

"Madame Cézanne," Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, November 19, 2014–March 15, 2015.
Inscriptions, Signatures and Marks
printed label with additions in ink-probably dislodged from the back of the frame

Cataloguing data may change with further research.

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